Author
Topic: swarm lure vs "kill the invader queen" (Read 880 times)

Does anyone understand how this works? If you pinch a queen and put her in alcohol, this works as a lure to attract swarms. But if instead of pinching her, you put that same queen into an existing hive, the bees would probably kill her.

It's pretty clear that bees can tell one queen from another since they kill intruders and protect their own queen. Why then is the pheromone of a foreign queen attractive to a swarm? You would think they would be repelled if they thought a space was occupied by a queen not their own. Do swarms just follow any queen scent they can find?

I would think they can tell a fresh scent from an old one. A swarm will occupy any void where there has been bees before.

Logged

"Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me . . . Anything can happen, child. Anything can be"

>Does anyone understand how this works? If you pinch a queen and put her in alcohol, this works as a lure to attract swarms.

I never pinch them. I just drop her in the alcohol. A swarm doesn't know one queen from another. It is attracted to QMP.

> But if instead of pinching her, you put that same queen into an existing hive, the bees would probably kill her.

Actually, they might, but probably is stretching it. If you put her at the entrance they will.

>It's pretty clear that bees can tell one queen from another since they kill intruders and protect their own queen.

There is a school of thought, led by none other than Brother Adam, that they CANNOT tell their queen from another, but they can tell a queen who is currently laying from one that's been in a cage a few days.

> Why then is the pheromone of a foreign queen attractive to a swarm?

Swarms are chaos. They often swarm at the same time as other hives and obviously can't tell which is their cluster by the way the clusters grow and shrink.

>You would think they would be repelled if they thought a space was occupied by a queen not their own.

There is a school of thought, led by none other than Brother Adam, that they CANNOT tell their queen from another, but they can tell a queen who is currently laying from one that's been in a cage a few days.

There are probably times when the growth of a hive is limited by the rate the queen can lay. Have you tried adding a second laying queen to a fast growing hive to see if it would build even faster? Seems like that might really make a difference during spring buildup.

Does anyone understand how this works? If you pinch a queen and put her in alcohol, this works as a lure to attract swarms. But if instead of pinching her, you put that same queen into an existing hive, the bees would probably kill her.

I had 5 or 7 queens in alcohol and it has no effect on swarms. I throw away that stuff. I Tried it on several swarms.

I had a Russian lure greese which atracted very well swarm. One swarm dropped it down from 15 m high level.

Then I have used a French spray. No effect. it think that it evaporate in sun shine too quickly. A greese keeps its aroma longer.